The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [18]
“Sir, sir, sir!” implored McDonagh.
Mr. Laverty glanced up wearily. “What is it, McDonagh?”
“How do you say ‘The woman from the dole with the broken briefcase came to see me da’?”
“Use something else simpler,” sighed Mr. Laverty.
McDonagh nodded enthusiastically and then drew an exaggerated look of puzzlement across his face.
“What is it now, McDonagh?”
“How do you say ‘woman,’ sir?”
“Get outside the door, McDonagh.”
That was sometimes Mr. Laverty’s thing. If he was feeling sporting, he didn’t actually send you to Brother Loughlin. He just put you outside the door, and if you happened to get caught then you got a hiding. It was a game of roulette and gave the boys, Mr. Laverty felt, a fair chance and took all responsibility away from him. McDonagh closed the door softly behind him and pushed himself into the alcove where coats were supposed to hang.
Mr. Laverty opened the door. “Out against the wall where I can see you,” he hissed into the reverberating emptiness of the corridor. McDonagh reluctantly moved to the other side of the corridor where he knew he would be visible from either end, thus increasing his chances of being caught. “Ye pays yer money and ye takes yer chances,” observed Mr. Laverty and returned to his class.
The hands on the clock crawled round their course as the boys flipped through their French books looking for sentences they could use. There seemed to be no lessons in this course that concerned scutting on the back of speeding trucks or smoking loose cigarettes in laneways or inventing lies about feeling up girls or any of the other activities that had occupied them over the summer.
A perfunctory knock at the door announced the intrusion of a Brother into the class of a lay teacher. This was always done with the minimum of ceremony or apology, as if to remind the lay teachers that they were only there on sufferance until the inevitable upsurge in vocations to the Brotherhood.
“Mr. Laverty, a moment of your time,” announced Brother Mulligan imperiously as he entered.
Mr. Laverty smiled coldly and went to sit on the windowsill.
Brother Mulligan was by all conservative estimates in his late nineties. He was only recently retired from teaching and now spent his time collecting pennies for the Missions, selling scapulars, medals, and rosary beads, and conducting other minor evangelical tasks. He wobbled and shimmered like someone who was not quite real; you could not look at him for too long without feeling that the film you were watching had stuck in the projector and was about to burn to bits.
“Mr. Laverty, I think it would be helpful if that boy outside the door was returned to the class so he could hear this with the rest of them.”
Mr. Laverty slouched over to the door and yanked it open: “McDonagh, get in here and stand in the corner and listen to what the Brother has to say.”
Brother Mulligan placed himself under the crucifix that hung above the blackboard and cleared his throat theatrically. “Now, you boys are approaching a point in your lives when you must begin to make decisions for yourselves. This can be a difficult and frightening time. Do I join the Electricity Supply Board? Do I try for junior clerical assistant in the Department of Fisheries? Do I acknowledge who I really am, abandon notions of uppitiness, and leave school to get an apprenticeship in one of the trades or a delivery job with a prosperous grocer? These are all important questions. But there is another question that it is time for you boys to ask yourselves: Do I hear a call? Do I feel the need to give something back in gratitude for what I have received?
“Do I think that with the help of the Holy Ghost, Our Lady of Indefinite Duration, and Venerable Saorseach O’Rahilly, I could make the commitment to the Brotherhood?